Film: DVD Reviews
Get geeked about this cult TV series on DVD
By Joe GrossApril 22, 2004
'Freaks and Geeks -- The Complete Series'
($69.98, Sony Music Video)
(show)
(DVD format and extras)
As they're so fond of saying on the Trio channel, "Freaks and Geeks" was the epitome of "brilliant but canceled," the last, best TV show of the 20th century.
Well, it was close to the last, and it's entirely possible that, save perhaps for the first half-dozen years of "the Simpsons," it was the best.
Running for less than half a season in 1999, the hour-long dramedy was the most accurate depiction of high school ever brought to the small screen. The program centered around Lindsay and Sam Weir (Linda Cardellini and John Francis Daley, both note-perfect), two middle-class high school students in small-town Michigan in 1980. Lindsay is trying to break out of her shy, brainy persona by hanging out with the "freaks," the "bad" kids of low ambition and lower expectations. The younger Sam, a "geek" to the core, complete with Dungeons & Dragons, "Star Wars" and Bill Murray obsessions, is similarly trying on new hats (asking out a cheerleader, for example). Critics went bananas over the lovingly rendered, often hysterically funny, often squirm-inducing interrelationships between these just-folks outsiders. But despite impeccable scripts, stellar casting and brilliant period music, the show never quite found anything beyond a fanatical cult following.
So we've been waiting for this one for awhile. Loaded with nearly 30 hours of commentary and scads of deleted scenes, this six-DVD, 18-episode set, which has come to light due largely to the relentless bugging of loyal fans, is as fitting and complete a tribute as one could expect. Either producer Judd Apatow or creator Paul Fieg is on most of the commentaries along with cast members who still seem enamored of the experience. (There's a $120 version for the truly deranged available from the show's Web site.)
'Weezer -- Video Capture Device'
($16.98, Universal Music and Video) (Videos and music) (DVD format and extras)
The geek-pop band Weezer hit the scene with the radio-friendly, MTV-huzzahed 1994 "Blue Album" only to disappear for years after their second album, "Pinkerton," tanked. They later staged a 2001 comeback with their "Green Album" and its follow-up "Maladroit."
Now it's clear what happened: their videos for "Pinkerton" were awful, a mish-mash of blurry concert footage and uninspired directing. On their new compilation "Video Capture Device" the boys of Weezer (minus frontman Rivers Cuomo, who is nowhere to be found in the disc's extensive commantary tracks) throw in everything but the busted amp: every Weezer video (including commentary, outtakes and alternate versions), tons of concert takes and interviews, making-of studio footage and commercials. They're an amiable lot, goofy guys who made it big on the shoulders of Cuomo's songwriting and Brian Wilson-breakdown persona.
Which makes Cuomo's absence all the more noticeable on this disc, which will almost exclusively appeal to fans and completists, or those who just want Weezer's best videos, Spike Jonze joints like "Buddy Holly" or the superlative sumo clip, "Hash Pipe," in their DVD collection.
There is one stunning moment, though: a live acoustic performance of 'Mykel and Carli' at a memorial concert for Mykel and Carli Allen, Weezer fan club presidents who, along with their sister, Trysta, died in a car accident on their way back from one of the band's concerts. The girls' parents introduce the song and sway along as Cuomo breaks our hearts, melodically.
-- Omar L. Gallaga
'Panic Room (3-Disc Special Edition)'
($39.95, Columbia Tri-Star) (movie) (DVD format and extras)
Director David Fincher is known for caring deeply about how his films are immortalized on home video (his special editions for "Se7en" and "Fight Club" raised the bar early on in the DVD-supplements game), so it shouldn't surprise anyone that his latest, "Panic Room," is now getting a three-disc treatment that rivals anything released to date in terms of documenting the filmmaking process.
What may surprise some viewers is just how much planning went into this deceptively "small" film, a B-movie at heart that was as meticulously made, it seems, as a minor work by Kubrick. As fascinating behind-the-scenes material shows, Fincher's team not only built the entire four-story set so walls and floors could be yanked out to accomodate virtuoso camera movement, they also storyboarded the entire film using computer animation -- allowing them to see how minor design changes would affect the look of the film.
While the bulk of this edition's extras will be overkill for casual viewers (an exceptionally thorough discussion of various widescreen formats, though, adds substantially to the pan-and-scan debate), those who dream of becoming filmmakers can hardly get a better vicarious on-the-set experience. Fincher has videographers documenting every facet of the production, and presents this material almost without mediation. The result is truly astonishing in volume and detail. Rather than snippets of the computer pre-visualization, for instance, we get more than a third of the film's running time, with the final product and old-fashioned storyboards shown alongside for comparison. If the surplus of documentation encourages anyone to re-evaluate this underrated suspense film, so much the better.
-- John DeFore
Also out on DVD this week: "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," "The Office -- The Complete Second Series," "Step Into Liquid," "The Haunted Mansion," "ABCD," "3 Women -- Criterion Collection," "The Big Empty," "The Ingmar Bergman DVD Collection."
